


Tell it to the Mountain

by sunspeared



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/F, Genderswap, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-15
Updated: 2011-10-15
Packaged: 2017-10-24 15:50:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunspeared/pseuds/sunspeared
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the winter of 1940, and Norway is too old for this, and she could do without Prussia showing up at her doorstep. Or a troll following her around. Or <i>Sweden,</i> for that matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell it to the Mountain

**Author's Note:**

> Written for aph_historyswap, for kainoliero on LJ, for the prompt, "Genderbent Norway and Sweden, WWII. I'd like them to try to convince each other by any means necessary that their own way of dealing with the situation is the right one." [Gileonnen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen) was my kind and firm beta!

_  
You may have thought things would come right again  
If only you could keep quite still and wait.   
_

*

 _Winter of 1940._

"All I want is for you to come back with me -- pack your bag, I know you've got one packed," Prussia said, sipping from a glass of her best liquor. "You're all paranoid up here. It'll be a week, tops. Say hello to the kid, declare your eternal fealty to the glorious Reich, blah blah, Österreich makes us all a nice dinner because he has nothing better to do with his time -- have you ever had one of his cakes? No?"

Norway didn't think she could be faulted for taking the moment to hit him across the face hard with her broom. She didn't think she could be faulted at all. "No." She enunciated that clear as possible, in case he had trouble making the leap from _nei_ to _nein_. "I don't think I will."

"What's a little war in the family, Norwegen?" He shook his head, eyes unfocused, grinning around the pain. She hadn't lost her touch. She let the broom rest on the side of the kitchen table, anyway; he eyed it up, and for a long, long minute they were both very, very obviously looking around the room for anything they could use as a weapon. But he wasn't going to give her a fight, not here.

When he reached for his side, Norway tensed, but all he did was fish around in his pocket and pull out a lighter and pack of cigarettes and offer one to her. She shook her head. It was wartime, habits needed breaking. "I'm staying where I am," she said.

"Shit," Prussia said, "I'd do the same. But I'm not the one getting invaded here."

"So drag me down to Berlin." She didn't like how he looked in her kitchen, a drab grey uniform and inhuman white hair against the clean yellow tile behind her sink.

"What if Schweden said you'd come easy?" And now he rubbed the back of his head. "Said she'd hand you over to us with her bare hands if you didn't cooperate. Which" -- he put the cigarette in his mouth and let it dangle there -- "looks like you aren't."

It didn't sound like Sweden. Norway resisted the urge to run her hands through her freshly-cut hair. Denmark, maybe, if he was in a tight spot. Finland, never. "I'd say you were lying."

"And I'd say you got me," Prussia said. He took the cigarette out of his mouth to examine it, deceptively calm. "But come on, make it easy on yourself." He put it into the remains of the glass of aquavit, her _best_ aquavit, the very last of it, and she refused to bristle. She was Norway. Kongeriket Norge. She was always calm. "Look, no handcuffs, even."

There were gunshots somewhere in Trondheim, on the other side of the city. She shouldn't have been able to hear. Funny things happened in a war. "How many times do I have to say it, Preussen."

"Christ, it's not like we're going to _kill_ you. I'm not asking you to live there. What's a week?"

When he pushed off the counter, she took a step back -- not out of fear, but to get closer to her broom. She bet she could hit him, knock him unconscious, faster than he could shoot her. "Then why aren't you dragging me back?" she asked, with a solid pinch of _you've gone soft,_ right up at the surface of her tone.

Prussia rolled his eyes and looked up at the ceiling; he tugged at the iron cross at his neck before speaking. "Because the kid said to convince you. That we'd done enough damage. Said he's got your best interests at heart. You're like a cousin to us. He wants to meet you."

Which was bullshit, and she knew it was bullshit, and he said it like he knew it, too. "Look around," Norway said, nodding south, "he's not a _kid._ "

"Fuck, you think I don't know that?"

"And what did he say to do if I wouldn't come."

"Leave you," said Prussia. "Let you pick up your dead." He spread his arms wide, gracious, as if they both hadn't fought in enough battles to dismantle one another without a weapon. Showed her his palms, a gentleman _and_ a warrior, like they would fight fair if it did come to blows.

"He gave me a choice." Norway's pulse was pounding in the side of her neck. She didn't like this one bit.

" _Left_ one," he said, turning toward the door. "He left you one."

"And what you said about Sverige?"

Prussia's grin tore his face in two: a shark's grin, but with a light in the eyes a shark would never have. "Ask her yourself."

Then he turned and left the house without a word, and when Norway finally dared to move, after a full count of ten, the first thing she did was pick up the glass he'd touched and -- not throw it in the sink and break it. It would be a waste of a good cup. But she took the cigarette out and, on instinct, sniffed it.

French. It was French. It was France's: she'd smoked one of his before, she knew the smell of sunlight, hay, terrible wine, and too much cologne under the tobacco. If he'd smoked the thing, she never would have known.

So Prussia left it on purpose.

She hadn't thought he was that smart.

She dropped it on the floor and ground it under her heel, then swept it up neatly and tossed it in her dustbin.

Trondheim was as far north as Norway could get and still be close to her people; the warm mass of them pressed in on her, so that she didn't, strictly speaking, need a scarf when she left the house, or even a coat. It was winter, though, and she supposed it was bitter cold. She drank the rest of the aquavit in the glass, then picked a coat and a pair of mittens in red and white, with a garish selburose on the back. And a scarf, too.

Norway's house was one of four nigh-identical ones she had scattered around the country: one in Trondheim, another two in Bergen and Oslo, and a fourth one. _Go south,_ she thought, then immediately recognized the voice in her head as not her own.

Uncommon, these past few decades. Not entirely unheard of. She could ignore it until whatever felt the need to speak to her showed itself. _South,_ it said, again.

South was where Swedish trains brought German men and guns into her country. She was going north. If she hadn't been able to taste the fear on the air, easy as she felt the damp cold going through her coat, into her bones, she wouldn't have known she was walking through a conquered city -- but she _was_ the conquered city, and she fought down the double-vision that edged in at the periphery of her gaze. None of that. She was going _north,_ to clean snow and rocky mountain, where Prussia and Germany and whatever else they sent after her could never find her, and she was going to wait this out.

It was only a few minutes' walk to Nidaros Cathedral, and not only out of sentiment. The bridge over the Nidelva still had a German tank parked in the very middle of it; a few very intrepid bicyclists picked their way around it. A girl fell in next to Norway, on the beaten-down path of snow over the bridge, rubbing her bare hands together.

"They say there's no food at the market," she said, and ran her blue-and-purple fingers through her uncovered hair. "Have you been up there?"

"Nope," Norway said, "just going now." She could have -- should have -- walked faster, but it was nice to have someone next to her that wasn't trying to get something from her, if only for a minute. Tamping down memories of Prussia's first visit, she turned to the girl, who looked about the same age Norway looked. "You got brothers and sisters?"

"Two. Brothers." The girl paused to look over the ice-jammed river, and Norway stopped next to her. "You?"

"Cousins. Two of 'em. And a little brother. I guess."

They stood next to each other for a few moments in an amicable, polite silence, watching a few teenage boys try to pick their way over the ice, far enough away that they were only black spots under a grey sky. One touch of this girl's bare skin and Norway would know everything she needed to know about her. Other nations could do it without touch. She didn't want to know, she decided. When she pushed off the railing without a word, the girl's gaze followed her, and, what the hell, she unwound her scarf and took off her mittens and gave them to her, then walked off without a word.

Half a dozen German soldiers stood outside the church, all of them leaning against the wall, on their rifles. Shameful discipline. Under their chatter -- also shameful -- they were shivering. Uniforms weren't enough for _real_ cold. She was too tired, suddenly, to be smug, but she dredged up a little bit as she walked around them, slid through the middle door.

The inside of the cathedral was dim. She'd watched this place being built, she didn't need to stop and admire it. She did anyway, kicking the snow off her boots onto the marble floor, lest she take the filth of the city with her. It was a part of her, it was important, and she ran a hand along the pews as she walked down the aisle to press her forehead to one of the vaulted columns.

This was something the rest of her kind didn't know, and which Norway had never felt compelled to share: that you didn't have to travel from city to city and pray you didn't land somewhere awful, that if you tried hard enough, you could push a hole in the world within your borders and build routes, to go exactly where you wanted, every single time.

It only took a moment. Trondheim, to the oldest tree in the forest, up north. Norway braced herself against the freezing wind that tore through her coat, through her layers of thick wool sweaters, like they weren't there at all.

And there was a presence, sitting next to her.

"Hello," she said to the troll, leaning back against the tree, careful that she didn't fall back through to the church. She held out her hand to shake, and when it raised one of its enormous paws (it was big, it was massive for a troll in this day and age), she seized it by its short horns and butted her forehead hard against the bridge of its flat nose. "I don't think we've met," she went on. "Greet me before you talk in my head."

The troll nodded mutely, and she started off. It loped along next to her, now silent, now offering a great stony hand to help her over a fallen tree. "We've got ten kilometers." She hated herself for giving up her mittens and scarf, but she couldn't have done otherwise. "No chance of you going ahead and lighting a fire for me, if you're gonna follow?"

That sound it made, it was probably laughter. It sounded like half a hundred cats vomiting in unison.

They were close enough to the Vefsnfjord that she could smell seawater if she tried. The troll walked beside her quietly, a cloying kind of _quietly_ , until she finally said, "Do you talk?"

It shook its head. And so she knew: "One of the smart ones, then." Better than dumb and chattery, like the rest of its kind. A lot could happen to a species in a thousand years. A troll could trade its speech for wisdom. She didn't bother asking who it had traded it to, even if she'd been curious; she had a good enough idea.

Her muscles remembered the route, even if her brain didn't. The forest dropped off suddenly, into a perfect circular clearing -- she'd done that herself, with axe and fire and magics she could hardly remember. Her house rose up in the very center of it, dark slate roof clear of icicles, kept intact by spells that would keep it untouched until she herself fell. Keep its contents as pristine as its walls. Keep the wind from howling around it at night.

The troll stopped at the edge of the clearing, right before Norway took a step in. "Come on," she said, and beckoned it in past her first line of defense, for creatures of the forest. The woods had once been full of them. "Long as you're here, might as well stand guard."

*

She hadn't been here in fifteen long years: dust covered every surface, but disappeared into nothing as she passed, as though the house had just realized she'd arrived and rushed to make itself presentable. She shucked her coat and sweaters on the floor in the front hallway, peeled her boots off, made her way into the sitting room.

The house started its own fire for her. The kitchen still had food enough to last her. The library, too, was stocked beyond a scholar's wildest imaginings, books that passed into legend centuries ago stacked up on the tiny desk by the window that let in the thin northern sunlight.

Dropping heavy into her armchair, Norway shut her eyes and yawned and fished out the book she'd left in the space between the cushions. This place ran off of her, off of the unnatural forces that made her possible; she'd be tired all the time. But she would be safe, and if she was safe, her people's spine couldn't be broken. Up here, far away from the masses, she would remember what she was.

She burrowed in for the stay. It took her a week to get restless. A week of walking the hour to and from the tiny town by the river, Mosjøen, to say hello to the people there, and buy what extra food she could. The troll left a trail of broken trees for her outside the clearing, and helped her chop them down into firewood -- she'd left too fast last time to stock herself up proper.

"Could've invited Danmark and Sverige to stay up here," she grunted. She had to lean on her axe for a moment. "Danmark, Sverige, Island." The troll broke the rest of the log in half and looked down at her, face impassive. But she could see the light of hungry curiosity in its eyes. Who knew, maybe it'd traded some human for its eyes, for its brain. Like Peer Gynt under the mountain.

"I would've hated it after a year. If even that long. Six months, the three of us, at each other's throats. Don't know how we did it for" -- she had to count -- "a hundred twenty years. And Sverige, she's not even in any danger."

Cold anger welled up in her at that, so fast and hot that she clenched her hands into fists -- _Why don’t you ask her,_ a little voice whispered in her head, in _German,_ and it was a long moment before she could relax. Her troll's only, merciful response was to gather up her pile of wood and lumber back to the house with it, and Norway picked up her axe and started on the next log, ignoring the scream of her muscles, the numbness in her toes.

*

Three long, silent months, punctuated by her troll's quiet exhortations to go back south, all of which she summarily ignored in favor of waking up at dawn to eat tinned herring and salmon, cut more wood than she could use in a year, and work her way steadily through the new books she'd added to the library during her last visit.

Time was _funny_ , Norway thought, staring into the heart of the fireplace, holding her place in her book with one finger. A thousand years, and she could never be sure if something like this, these few months, would pass in the blink of an eye, or if she would feel every second of them. At least the restlessness had subsided, into the dull, queasy peace that came with being an occupied nation.

Norway turned her bleary eyes to look out the window at the setting sun when she heard her troll roar, then the sound of someone shouting, an animal couldn't have gotten through, and Norway was of half a mind to let her troll break its neck before she realized that she knew that shout, and too well.

Sweden, at her doorstep. Still, she didn't rush to greet her visitor. She closed her book, slow and deliberate, and gave the fire one last rueful glance before standing up to stretch and yawn and scratch at her ribs before making her way to the kitchen to peek out the window. Sweden lay on her back, grappling with the troll and, all things considered, she gave it a decent fight. But only that: decent. She'd would tire before the troll did, if Norway didn't intercede. The only decent thing to do was intercede.

She stayed at the window and watched a few moments longer.

When she came out of the house, Sweden had struggled panting to her feet. Her thick, heavy braid was a mess, her glasses half buried in the snow, and her jacket was splattered with snow and mud. The troll had backed off a few meters, teeth bared in a grimace Norway knew was a smile.

"Should've sent word ahead of you, Sverige," Norway said. Both of their heads snapped toward her. Her troll relaxed visibly. Sweden didn't. "'m not dressed for visitors. It's not decent."

"You weren't in Oslo or Bergen. Thought I'd find you here." Sweden started in her own language and ended in Norwegian, which wasn't near enough to placate Norway, but close enough for her to decide to let her in the house. Just for a minute, just to get cleaned up.

Sweden bent down to pick up her glasses, and the troll twitched, but Norway held up a hand and shook her head. _She'd give you indigestion,_ she thought at it, surprised at how easy it was for her to reach out. It made that sound again, that laughing sound that somehow managed to sound like a cough and the screech of metal on metal at the same time, and Sweden stood up straight and stared at it. "You can come in," Norway said.

Sweden frowned, gave the troll one last glance, then followed Norway in. The magics started their work on her right away, getting the mud out of her hair and off her coat. Norway didn't stop them, though she could have. She wasn't _that_ angry.

"Haven't been here in – "

"A hundred years," said Norway. _And I shouldn't have brought you here in the first place._ Damage done. She turned around to see Sweden taking her hair out of its braid – stupid, for her to keep her hair so long. "Any reason you feel the need to visit now? Miss me?"

If she closed her eyes, she could see the line of rail that connected them, Trelleborg to Oslo. Trains, bringing men and materiel to her country. She didn't close her eyes.

"Preussen visited me," Sweden said. "Said he'd visited you, too." She took a seat in Norway's armchair, then changed her mind and stood up when she saw the look on Norway's face.

Norway sat down and didn't care if she looked weak, putting the book in her lap to hold onto. "And you came to make sure I was intact."

The fire had burned low without Norway's attention. Sweden half-bent to pick up the black iron poker, and made an unhappy strangled sound in the bottom of her throat. "Bruised 'em," she muttered, while Norway watched her prod at the coals, wood falling in on itself. "Didn't have to set the troll on me."

"It has a mind of its own." Norway pressed the book to her forehead while Sweden's back was turned. "If you'd told me you were coming, I could've let it know."

"Yeah."

"If you'd _helped_ me, we wouldn't be standing here."

There. There it was. Let Sweden mumble her way around it. She didn't care if her tone had been too sharp, that it wouldn't achieve anything but making Sweden withdraw into herself, adjust her glasses, which -- was what she did, when she straightened up and put the poker back in its place with the rest of the fireplace things. Her face was even stonier than normal, which was an accomplishment, seeing as she hadn't made a discernable facial expression in the past eighty years. "'f I could've..."

"If."

"Ain't fair, Norge," she added. "You're not mad at _me_."

"Am I?"

"No." Grabbing the unused stool from in front of Norway's armchair, Sweden sat down, absurd with her long legs and arms. It put her lower than Norway. It was a start. It couldn't have been the most comfortable way to sit, not with her ribs; Norway would have doubted they were bruised if she thought Sweden was the kind of nation to lie about that sort of thing, to get Norway's sympathy. "Not me."

Norway wanted to lift Sweden's shirt up and _check._ "I spent fifty years being mad at you, Sverige."

The firelight gleamed dully in Sweden's glasses for a moment, then she leaned forward. Her breathing was careful, if not labored, when she said, "Fifteen."

"Thirty," said Norway, doubling the figure just to be perverse. But Sweden didn't parse sarcasm, she probably _couldn't_ , and her face fell. But now was the perfect time to go for the throat, Norway knew. No guilt. "When's Tyskland going to come for you? What about Russland? What about _her?_ When's she going to decide she's had enough of you aiding her enemy? You want to see Finland so bad, that it? Miss her so much?"

\-- Finland was too far. Mentioning Finland was always too far. _No guilt,_ Norway thought, avoiding Sweden's eyes, and went on, "What if they decide they're going to tear you in two, when they're done ripping out each other's throats? Russland comes from the north, Tyskland from the south. Who's gonna help you then, Sverige?"

"Think I don't know."

Sweden pressed a hand into her ribs – to help herself sit up straight, Norway realized, and tried not to shrink back in her chair. Slow as Sweden was sometimes, she wouldn't hurt Norway in this place, not here, not ever. "Think I don't know," she repeated. "You think I'm not scared?"

"I think -- "

"You think I'm not scared for you and Danmark and -- and -- "

If Norway hadn't known better, she would've said Sweden was choking on Finland's name. But this was as far as her outbursts could go, and Sweden collapsed in on herself under Norway's scrutiny, just a little slumping of the shoulders and a gripping of the front of her shirt where she was trying to press away the pain of her bruises. It was enough. Norway didn't even sigh when she stood up and gathered up Sweden's loose hair, bunching her hand up at the roots – enough to annoy, not to hurt – and started combing her fingers through it. "Haven't been taking care of yourself," she said. "Who brushes your hair when I'm not around? You should cut it."

She'd only do this for a minute. When Sweden's hair was braided back up, nice and neat, she could be mad again. Norway tilted Sweden's head back and removed her glasses, setting them on the mantle so their arms didn't mess up her work, and set about the work of getting the snarls out.

"Like it better long," Sweden said.

"Dumb."

"Yep."

Sweden's hair parted in the center, and if Norway had been feeling any kind of tender, she would have pressed her lips to the skin showing there, for old time's sake. But they were too raw, right now. It was just an armistice. There weren't as many tangles as she'd expected, and she was almost disappointed when it came time to finish her work.

She felt Sweden shift, and pulled the beginnings of the braid taut at the base of her skull to discourage her. From leaning back. Or anything else. "I'd say it can't be any good in a fight," said Norway, pulling it tighter and tighter.

All Sweden did was snort, though the sound ended strangled on the pain that must've been in her side: old argument, Sweden fought just fine, and Norway bet she kept it long on purpose, to taunt people. _No,_ she thought, _that's something you would do_. Something she _had_ done, before cutting it so it only went down to her chin.

"Want me to look at your ribs?" Norway said, before she could think too hard about it.

Sweden shook her head, slow, then brushed the loose hair away from her face. "Gonna take care of 'em when I get home."

"Suit yourself." Norway reached over Sweden's shoulder for the ribbon she used to tie off the end of her braid. Blue, yellow stripe. Of course. She used to get them for free, from a milliner down the street from her enormous house in Stockholm, and if nothing else Sweden took care of her things.

It was only when she took a step back from Sweden that she realized how close she'd been standing to the fire; how warm she was, and how cold, the rest of the room. "Got somethin' to eat?" Sweden asked, standing up and squinting around for her glasses. Norway handed them to her without looking.

"No," Norway lied through her teeth. "Haven't stocked up yet this week."

Anyone but Norway wouldn't have been able to read the crestfallen on Sweden's features: a tiny thinning of the lips, the way she stood up just a little straighter, a near-imperceptible sigh. "I'll go," she said, adjusting her glasses on her face. "Make sure the troll doesn't eat me?"

"Why'd you come in the first place?"

"Don't remember." Sweden shrugged. "Doesn't seem so important."

*

It happened in the library first, a month later -- Norway caught herself staring out the south-facing window, mouth hanging open like a sleeping drunkard's. Her troll passing by with a dead bear's corpse in its teeth was what it took to snap her out of it. The red in the snow sank in and disappeared, like it had never been there. And then the village wasn't enough contact with her people.

And then she found herself talking aloud to herself, more and more, until she felt her lips moving while she read a book and slammed it shut and squeezed her eyes tight, trying to remember -- that she was her empty spaces, too, she was her fjords and mountains; she'd once spent a decade in this house sitting out the worst the world could throw at her, and she could do it again.

"I dreamed it into being." She sat on the front porch without her coat on, and nothing under her sweater but her bare skin. She needed to keep her hands busy. Knitting a new scarf would do, to pass the time. "This house."

Her troll lolled on its back, looking up at her like an oversized, scaly kitten waiting for its belly to be scratched. "Sort of," Norway continued, instead. "It's wasn't dreaming. Don't remember how I did it. But I wanted this place, and here it is."

 _Imagined,_ her troll said.

"That's a way to put it," Norway said. "Imagined it. There's secret passages in the walls, I was a kid, I loved that kinda thing. Still do." The cold had stopped hurting her. It'd taken two years, last time, for that to stop, for her unnatural body to get used to the winters, away from proper civilization. It was a bad sign, and one she'd been planning on ignoring for as long as possible.

She stood up and stepped on her troll's stomach, shuffling her feet back and forth. And it _was_ hers, her people had dreamed them into being like she'd dreamed this house, the troll was hers as sure as the sea was. Sure as the sea had been once, at any rate. "Were you born then? You woulda felt it, in the bones of the land." She balanced on one foot for a moment, then sat back down and scratched the side of her nose with her knitting needles. "Bet you were.

"And, you know, I bet this is the only real magic left in the world. I see Storbrittanien sometimes, at meetings -- see him trying hard to listen to his fae. Kina, too, but I've only seen him once. He's not as old as he says, he can't be."

No answer. She was glad of it. She leaned back against the great birch door and fought against the urge to rub her eyes. This wasn't that long, quiet ten years she'd spent away from Sweden. She was a different country now. "How long can you stay down? Down south, before all that metal starts getting to you. All that iron," she heard herself say.

It rolled over onto its stomach, frowned, and held up two of its thick, clumsy fingers. Two hours, two days, two weeks, two years, it didn't matter, in the end, it'd have to go back up north eventually. Norway stood up to crack her neck, trailing yarn and scarf. "We're gonna take a walk, you and me."

*

The oldest tree in the forest down to Trondheim, then Trondheim to her unused house in Bergen; Bergen to an old grave on the outskirts of Oslo, and Norway had to stop there and press the palms of her hands into her temples to hold back the sudden band of headache tightening behind her eyes.

It'd been worse, last time. She'd been laid up in Christiansaand -- laid up for a month, which was probably what she got for denying her nature. She didn't know anyone else who'd tried running off to play hermit, let alone for ten years. She'd called it an experiment then. When she got to the fifth Harald on her list of kings, she realized her troll had managed to follow her, and it held her up until she could see. "I'm fine," she said, staring up at the weak winter sun with burning eyes. "It happens."

Her troll didn't look like it cared either way. It sat on its haunches when she slumped against the grave. Oslo to -- she didn't know. She could stay here, help her people, like a shadow in the night. But she knew she was headed east, eventually. Stockholm was the obvious choice. Trelleborg, down south, was the fastest, with its rail line bringing filthy Germans onto her soil. _Filthy,_ she thought, and grinned; she _missed_ this part of herself when she was up north, where the snow really did scour her clean.

Not Trelleborg. She'd lose days there, trying to walk across the country. She had a proper connection to Stockholm. A personal connection. And any nation went to their own capital in times of panic.

"Just a few more," she said, when she felt like she could stand up. "Can you cross the border?"

It didn't turn its head, didn't even blink, looked east.

"They believe in you over there, too, you know. Somewhere. You won't disappear." She scratched it hard, right between his eyes, butted her head against its own.

It was a straight line from Oslo to Uppsala, and then just a hop down to Stockholm, but she hadn't traveled like an honest nation in years and years, and hadn't left her own borders in twenty of those. By the time she got to a little town by a lake that called itself Ljusnarsberg, there was a dirty sweat of sheen on her face.

 _I don't have to go by the roads._ She stepped off the dirty path into the woods: thin woods, half-cut for firewood. Going by forest would be faster; trees had no borders, they didn't know they belonged to, the thin places nations exploited were even thinner where their roots spread. And so she made it to Uppsala in just three more hops, and went the rest of the way to Stockholm by foot. The soles of her good, strong boots were worn thin by now, and she winced to walk on them, but it was rude to show up in the middle of someone's capital unannounced. Capitals were sacrosanct.

Besides -- she and Sweden wore the same size shoes. They had the exact same feet. That was the first thing they figured out, after her first shot at being a recluse, once she'd been well enough to travel.

Norway turned to tell her troll that when she crossed the city limits, just to have something to say.

She'd lost it. Him. She must have always known that. But this was bad soil for its kind, Sweden didn't believe half as well as Norway did, Sweden had always had cold steel at her hip and an iron helm on her head.

"Didn't think I'd see you down here so soon," Sweden said, falling in step next to her.

Norway flinched before she could help herself. "Didn't think you'd find me in your country so quick."

"My capital." _My_ capital. Anyone else would have emphasized it. Sweden didn't need to. "Why'd you come?"

"It got lonely, I missed the conversation."

Sweden looked confused, until she realized Norway was only making a joke, and there was something almost endearing about the way that realization spread across her face. Just a tiny softening of the corners of her grim mouth. "Made dinner for us."

"What time is it?"

"You've been moving..." They turned a corner too sharp, and their arms bumped, but they moved a safe distance apart within seconds. They didn't touch again. "Two hours. You used to be faster."

"Just enjoying the scenery," Norway said, looking around at the city, jarred at how untouched it was. There was probably dirt on the side of her face, but no one stared. She fought against the urge to turn around, check and see if her troll wasn't loping along the streets behind them.

*

There was always something terrible at the end of an easy journey, and that was probably why she found Denmark sitting at Sweden's table, staring at the steaming dishes of fish and warm ärtsoppa like they were a nice pair of tits he wasn't allowed to touch.

And he probably wasn't. Sweden would cut off his hands. "Home," Sweden said, before Norway could bristle. Denmark turned around to look at them, eyes bright, and pushed back his chair so quick it scraped on the wooden floors when he rushed to sweep Norway into an embrace. She pressed her palm against his face, stopping him an arm's length away.

"Nice ta see you," he said, beaming and drawing himself up like he was going to spit on the floor, but stopped himself at the least moment.

 _Well met_ \-- but they didn't talk like that anymore, so she nodded and leaned against the wall. "You're in one piece."

"I didn't hold out as long as you, Norge."

"Talk over food," said Sweden, before either of them could say any more, and she grabbed the two of them by the elbows and sat them down in their chairs. She was taller than both of them, she could do that, even Russia would think twice about taking a swing at her. In person, at least.

Denmark was paler, more drawn than she remembered, watching him shovel the food into his mouth. Norway couldn't remember the last time the three of them had sat down at a table together, civilly, and just had a meal.

Denmark looked up from the hunk of bread he'd just torn off the loaf. "Sverige says you tried the holy woman thing again."

Norway made a point of not glancing at Sweden before she spoke. "Preussen invited me to Berlin. I went north. Mosjøen."

"Where's that?"

"The fjords. Not all the way up."

"You and the fjords," he said, as though there was an enormous joke rattling somewhere in his head, if only he could just find a way to make it come out. "She came back a mess."

Sweden grunted at that, and both of their heads turned to see her scowling. "Not my fault," she said. "She's got trolls."

"You make it sound like an army."

Denmark -- oblivious. "And I had to keep saying, 'Deep breaths, Sverige, deep breaths, it's gonna be healed in a couple hours, don't want to fall into bad habits, do ya?' And she almost tossed me out a window." He sopped up the last of his soup with the bread. "Actually, she might've done it, I don't remember. Is it true your house up there's magical?"

"'S just a house," Sweden said.

"Bet it's nice." Denmark crossed his arms over his chest. "Why'd you come here?"

Norway considered her answer, in light of the fact that she wasn't sure. The silence wouldn't be remarked upon, that was normal with the three of them, Denmark -- and Finland, wherever she was -- could keep conversation enough going for all five of them. "I was rough, up there," she said, "I wanted to apologize, is all."

"You wanted a free meal, that it?"

"That's exactly it."

"Hey," he said, while they were washing the dishes and Sweden was getting the other guest room ready for Norway, "I know. Preussen showed up at your house, didn't he." Norway looked up from the fork whose tines she was paying far, far too much attention to and raised her eyebrows, to get him to go on. "Said Tyskland wanted you to come down to Berlin? And said you didn't _have_ to come?"

Norway nodded and tossed the fork at him to dry; he caught it without looking. "''S not like we're going to _kill_ you.'"

"I ran, Norge."

"Didn't think you had it in you."

Denmark elbowed her, snorting. "Packed a bag, ran to Aarhus, sweet-talked my way onto a freighter bound for Gävle, didn't look back."

"Why Gävle?"

"Who'd look for me that far up north?"

"And you went down south on foot."

"Sverige caught me in Uppsala, dragged me back here by my collar, told me I could stay as long as I wanted."

And probably broke at least two chairs over his head in the process of getting used to each other, without Norway around to keep them from killing each other. But now they were three, and this could get comfortable, just like the old days. "How long're you going to stay?"

"I need to go back," he said. Too calm. Too much like there was a lump caught in his throat. She knew him. "There's always a resistance."

Norway's hand slipped on the plate she was washing, and she dropped it into the shallow water in the sink and watched it break, and the halves float to opposite sides of the basin. She didn't fish it out just yet. "How long d'you think this is going to last?"

"Ten years." Denmark ran a hand through his hair. Dark blond, the kind you only saw on the nations of the continent, but his eyes were the same cold blue as hers and Sweden's. "Thirty years. Could be worse!"

"How."

"Could be the French. Again."

Point. She shrugged and got the broken plate out of the sink, only to find herself crushed in a hug against his chest. "Stay safe, Norge."

"If you don't let me go, I'm going to -- "

"Christ in fuckin' heaven, shut up."

"Break your ribs," she finished, but didn't fight him. "Drop you out north and let you freeze."

"Feed me to the trolls."

She smiled and hoped he couldn't feel it through his shirt. "Grind your bones to make my bread."

"That's the spirit," he said. He let her go, and she composed her face, made her eyes go dull and calm, brushed some imaginary dirt from her front. "Bet she'd let us stay here the whole war, if it came down to it," he went on, "bet she _would_ hide us as long as we wanted her to."

 _Why don't you ask her?_ Prussia had said, but here she had her answer. Maybe. "We won't stay."

"Nope." Denmark's eyes flicked up, over her shoulder -- Sweden, then, in the doorway.

Norway made like she didn't see where his gaze went and turned back to the sink, pretended she'd caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of her eye. "Sverige," she said.

"Room's ready."

"In a minute."

Sweden turned around to leave. Denmark shooed her, "I've been doin' 'em for six months straight, one more won't kill me," and so she dried her hands off on the towel and followed Sweden up, two flights of stairs, to Norway's old room.

The books were still there. All of them. The bookshelves were built to accommodate the sloping ceiling; Norway'd watched her put them up for her, a little more than a century ago. There was no dust. Like she'd never left.

"You couldn't have cleaned all this up in the two hours I was crossing your land."

"Kept it clean for you."

Norway sat down on her bed and looked up at Sweden, half-lit as she was in the setting sun's light. "Would you have handed me over to Preussen, if he'd asked?"

And Sweden dropped herself in an armchair and took off her glasses to clean them. She looked squinty without them. Her mouth looked smaller. "Would've sent him back to Berlin," she said. "Boot in his ass. Both of their asses."

"Not like they can do anything to you."

Sweden shook her head. Norway ran her hand over the quilt. The clumsy stitches under her fingers suggested Finland's handiwork -- Sweden's were so tiny you couldn't see them. She'd made the bed, too, Norway knew, from the selburose carved into the headboard. Thoughtful gesture. "They could," Sweden said.

"Yeah," said Norway. "Where are you going to go when they come for you?"

" _If._ "

"If they come for you, then."

A long silence, while Sweden though. She opened her mouth, then shook her head and put her glasses back on her face, and thought some more. Finally, she said, "Danmark says ten years."

"'Til this thing is over. Out of all of us, I bet you could hold out the longest," Norway said, "bet you'd last _three_ months."

If Sweden got the joke, she didn't give any indication. "Four. Maybe five. Depends on how thin they're spread."

"You've been thinking about this."

"'Course I have." Sweden's knuckles went white on the arms of the chair, but so far as Norway could tell, nothing else in her body was tense. "I'd be -- another front. Russland against Tyskland. Storbritannien and Frankrike and Amerika stay out of it 'til the last minute, 'cause I'm not..."

Norway got up and crossed the room when Sweden's words died, and it was the oddest sensation, looking _down_ at her. "Not that important. Not as important as them. Doesn't matter who loses, long as Tyskland doesn't win." She reached out to cup Sweden's face with one hand. Sweden jerked away from her touch at first, then pressed her cheek into it when Norway didn't let go. "Long as you bleed him dry in the process."

"Let him try," said Sweden, uncharacteristically clear. "I'll strangle him and Preussen with my bare hands. But my people're safe, for now."

And that was all that mattered. To either of them. To _any_ of them.

They stayed like that for a few long minutes, until Norway summoned up the presence of mind to pull her hand back. Sweden reached out, as though to touch her, but Norway shied away from her, retreated to sit back down on the bed and wait for Sweden's next move.

But Sweden didn't move. All she did was -- sit in the chair, looking past Norway, out the window, straight into the sun, and Norway would've been worried if they weren't mostly invulnerable. No such thing as a blind nation. (Only blind leaders.) "Bet Danmark's breaking your dishes down there outta spite," she said, when she couldn't stand it any longer.

"Only did that the first two weeks," Sweden said flatly. "Then I put his head through the window."

It sounded plausible enough for the two of them that it took Norway a moment to realize Sweden was _kidding,_ and how long had it been since she'd honestly laughed? Longer than she cared to remember. "I woulda put him through a wall."

"Did that, too. Made him patch it up when he was done."

That one -- that one, Norway knew she wasn't joking about. "What'd he do to make you?"

"It was when I came back from tryin' to convince you to come back with me."

If there'd been a smile on Norway's face, it was gone. "That's why you came?"

Sweden nodded. "He said I shoulda sent _him,_ he woulda convinced you."

It was almost touching, Norway thought. Sweden, refusing to betray Norway's secret hideaway, using it as an excuse to get into a fistfight with Denmark, not that they needed excuses to fight. "If it'd been him, I would've let the troll eat him."

"Told him that," Sweden said. "He still doesn't believe in the trolls."

"'Cause he can't see them." Norway crossed her legs on the bed, and Sweden mirrored the movement, settling back deeper in the chair. It was more like -- the troll beat the shit out of him, and he believed in the trolls then, but then he forgot about them entirely until the next time he got the shit beat out of him. "Anyway," she said, and found herself at a loss for words, with Sweden staring at her. She turned to look at the bookshelves, the pretty birch bookshelves built into the wall; in the years since Norway had been in her room, Sweden had taken a fine chisel to their edges, carved the tiniest details into them. The whole was like that."Thanks."

The chair creaked, betraying its age, when Sweden stood up. "Just wanted to hit him," she said, and opened her mouth to say something else before the sound of something breaking, loud enough for them to hear on the third story, drew their attention toward the door. "I should go," Sweden added, without looking at her, "go check on that."

"Yeah," Norway said. If she beckoned, Sweden would forget Denmark and come to her, they got each other well enough to get the hint, but this wasn't the time. And it wouldn't be, not for a long time. "You do that."

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  \- Philip Larkin, "Myxomatosis"   
> 
> 
>   
> \- For the (historical) record: Norway surrenders fully to Germany in June 1940, after two months of resistance. The fighting is especially bitter in Trondheim.    
> 
> 
>   
> \- The same month, Sweden agrees to transport German troops to Oslo.    
> 
> 
>   
> \- Of all the countries that declared neutrality in WWII, Sweden's was the only declaration that was respected (because, really, it was probably the only country with any intention of actually staying neutral, quoth my beta and her Strong Opinions about Scandinavia).   
> 
> 
>   
> \- "like Peer Gynt under the mountain": Peer Gynt agrees to marry the Troll King's daughter on the condition that he trade his feet for the feet of a troll, his hands for the hands of a troll -- but he balks at trading his eyes for the eyes a troll, his brain for the brain of a troll.    
> 


End file.
